Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Concerto for Cootie: The Life and Times of Cootie Williams

Concerto for Cootie: The Life and Times of Cootie Williams

Bowie, Steven C.
Nixon, Leon

Audio Book

Series: American Made Music

Entertainment & Performing ArtsMusiciansMusic Reference

ISBN13: 9798228831889
Publisher: Tantor
Published: Oct 6 2026
Language: English

Jazz legend Cootie Williams left home to start his career as a professional musician at the age of fifteen. In 1940, after eleven years as one of the major soloists with the Duke Ellington orchestra, Williams was lured away to the band of Benny Goodman, one of the most popular bands in the country. At the time, it was a controversial move―it was still taboo for African Americans to share the bandstand with white people. Current references reduce it to a song by Raymond Scott, When Cootie Left the Duke. In reality, it was a seismic event. The Black press predicted Black bands would collapse from raids on their ranks. White musicians were afraid they would be put out of work. And the white press stirred up visions of Black musicians mixing with white women in the new landscape of integrated orchestras.

The twenty years trumpeter Williams spent as a band leader have been covered in the barest of details. His involvement in politics and the civil rights movement have not been detailed before. An astute talent scout, Williams and his band launched the careers of Eddie Cleanhead Vinson, Earl Bud Powell, Eddie Lockjaw Davis, and Pearl Bailey. He also was the first to record the music of a young Thelonious Monk, using two of Monk's compositions as theme songs for his band. Steven C. Bowie respectfully tells Williams's story, from his Alabama ancestry onward.

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